You get what you pay for
Jerry Coyne’s take on the Templeton Prize is slightly different from Mark Vernon’s.
Templeton plies its enormous wealth with a single aim: to give credibility to religion by blurring its well-demarcated border with science. The Templeton Prize, which once went to people like Mother Teresa and the Reverend Billy Graham, now goes to scientists who are either religious themselves or say nice things about religion.
That’s why it really is a form of bribery. It’s open, transparent, accountable bribery, as opposed to back-room under the table bribery, but it is bribery: the prize rewards a predetermined ideological viewpoint, as opposed to research or inquiry or art. It rewards various versions of the claim that religion and science somehow work together as opposed to competing or clashing; it does not reward versions of the claim that they don’t and can’t.
Templeton’s mission is a serious corruption of science. Like a homeopathic remedy, it dilutes the core of the scientific enterprise, which has achieved its successes by holding doubt as a virtue and faith as a vice.
And by doing this it also balks and confuses the public understanding of science and of thinking in general. It obscures the fact that “faith” is not a useful tool for finding things out.
…although science and religion are said to be “different ways of knowing”, religion isn’t really a way of knowing anything – it’s a way of believing what you’d like to be true. Faith has never vouchsafed us a single truth about the universe.
And the “different ways of knowing” claim, again, is a snare and a delusion for people in general. It’s the wrong kind of “framing”…
I think the reason the “different ways of knowing” canard is so successful is because there are different ways of knowing things, with their various advantages and disadvantages. I would call intuition a “way of knowing” that is not part of science and is at least somewhat valid some of the time (of course we know science is going to be far more reliable, but the point is that intuition is not useless, and it is at least in some sense a “different way of knowing”).
So people nod their heads and agree with that so easily, failing to recognize that faith is actually not a way of knowing, has never been, has no value in terms of “knowing”.
Intuition isn’t radically different though. There really is overlap – not bogus overlap as with “faith” and science, but real overlap. Intuition is based on the senses, background knowledge, etc – it’s not just wishful or guesswork.
Not that that changes your point – just that it’s one way to explain to Templeton targets what the difference is.
I’d consider intuition only a common first step on the road to knowing, if we call knowledge justified true belief. Unverified intuitions believed remain faith, dogma, and superstition until they have sufficient evidence and reason to justify them, at which point they become knowledge.
When I see someone has won the Templeton or Nobel Peace prize, I intuitively think “pious fraud.” If they’ve won both, I know it. ;-)
The Boss wrote:
Unverified intuitions believed remain faith, dogma, and superstition until they have sufficient evidence and reason to justify them, at which point they become knowledge
The above quote reminded me of some crusty German guy from Koeningsberg who wrote:
In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear that the only manner in which it immediately relates to them is by means of an intuition.
To me it seems like these “other ways of knowing” are synonymous with taking what people say at face value, then extrapolating from those initial premises based on other things people say, making the whole exercise a study in begging the question. Hence ideas like “all religions are basically the same,” (taking what every religion says at face value, then subtracting differences) or “the awarding of the Templeton prize to Martin Rees represents a turning point in the ‘god wars'” (taking the importance of a million pound award at face value, without considering that the point of the award is to make the claims of the organization sound legitimate).
The central insight of skepticism and atheism (gnu or otherwise) is that the uncomfortable feeling you get when flatly contradicting what someone else has said is not a way of knowing what is correct.
I also recoil when I hear the “different ways of knowing” phrase. I would accept “different ways of thinking” or “different ways of deciding.” But “different ways of knowing” as a concept completely sidesteps the entire problem of epistemology simply by asserting that faith is a kind of knowing. In the real world, we know that epistemology is complex and that while science and mathematics have their own (oft-discussed) epistemological flaws, they currently stand as the *only* philosophical frameworks that ever led to significant improvement in the knowledge base of humanity about the nature of the universe.
(This is not scientism, by the way, since science and maths can’t answer every question, and if there were another path to real knowledge I would be the first to embrace it as a sister to science, but historically every other “way of knowing” has failed utterly to advance understanding and in many cases has been actively antagonistic to it).
Hearing the phrase “other ways of knowing” provokes in me the desire to ask “so how do you know that <insert faith-based belief appropriate to the person, e.g., transubstantiation> is real, and how would you convince a <insert faith-based opponent, e.g. Protestant> of its reality?” It will become rapidly apparent to any genuine observer that “knowing” has nothing to do with it.
Chris! For shame! How dare you use the “E-word” in polite company?! Don’t you know that we’re never, ever, EVER supposed to mention <exaggerated whisper> epistemology </exaggerated whisper> and religion in the same sentence, or even in close proximity?
If it were bribery, wouldn’t that imply that winners wouldn’t have said nice things about religion without the prize? I can see that type of bribery working, but evidence that it is in fact happening is required to make the accusation. And is the Nobel Prize for Physics a bribe for doing physics?
I’ll let you in on a secret, too — most people have never heard of the Templeton Prize. They’ve heard of Oprah, though, and she is perhaps the most important anti-scientific influence in the US. Remember The Secret? It’s her you need to be worrying about.
But G, you’ll get plantingalated if you don’t accept the warranted xtian’s epsitemology.
episiotomy? epistemology? I can’t spell. Can’t formulate a coherent sentence either. I might be that struggling writer who says fuck off in reply to criticism. If only I had ambition, I could be her. At least R.J. Hoffman would have had a point if he aimed his criticisms directly at me.
It at least implies that the prize encourages people to say religion and science are compatible, which is what I said. The evidence that it’s happening is lots of people saying it, many of them quite insistently, many of them people who might have been disinclined to say it otherwise. I’m also not sure that evidence is required to make the accusation in the generalized way I did, given the leeway opinion has under US law.
True about Oprah of course, but I work in a different sector. One does what one does.
I think that a lot of the people who insist that there are “different ways of knowing” also tend to insist that there are different kinds of “truth.” When you ask them what they mean, they’ll perhaps talk about how it might be “true for you” that country music is fun to dance to, but it’s not “true for them.” In which case, you might begin to see a glimmer of rational meaning behind their “different ways of knowing” — oh, maybe they’re really talking about preferences, and getting muddled in the translation.
Except they’re not just muddled in the translation: they also seem to be confusing religion with taste — but only to the point where you agree there’s no accounting for it, or arguing against it. Then all of a sudden its back to Cosmic Truth again — and atheists are wrong not just to say people are wrong about God, but they’re wrong about God, too.
If the accomodationist is just trying to hit that sort of vague target, then homeopathy is indeed “compatible” with modern chemistry: all you have to do is find a homeopathy-using chemist who successfully manages to compartmentalize his scientific knowledge of the way the world works from a simple belief in the correlation/causation of what “works for him.” And then we all stop there, because it’s his truth, after all.
Does anybody have a count on how many times this sentiment has been expressed? Somebody is always coming along who is going to stop the inevitable erosion. And did you hear there’s a kid in Paramus urging his peers to fight back against the gay agenda?
Every time I’m reading something and I see that sickening four-word tripe-fest, ‘other ways of knowing’, I always picture someone doing spooky hands [woo-oo-ooo!] as they say it.
The Templetonians would appear more honest if they stood outside college science departments and offered lecturers and researchers and grad students a hundred bucks a pop to have their photos taken next to a picture of Buddy Christ with text that reads ‘I do science and I love Jesus. See – they are compatible’.
How does someone winning a Templeton Prize settle anything? Would it represent the final triumph of Hardass Atheism if the prize went to Dawkins or Coyne? This is another example of arguing easy stuff like “who’s nice” or “who’s popular” instead of “who’s right”. It’s OK to argue easy questions (I like our chances on the popularity question) if you argue the tougher questions, too.
But there are legitimate “other ways of knowing” than explicit cogitation. There’s knowing that X, and knowing how to X. There’s knowing how to do something in theory, which is a million miles away from knowing how to in practice. There’s muscle memory. I can still play some piano pieces that I learned 35 years ago, because my fingers remember how to do them. My brain seems to have no part in the process (though obvs it must at some level.) There’s “I know that song” in which I can sing the entire thing from memory but have no clue about how to label it in terms of composer, performer etc.
TBH, I have no clue if this is in any way helpful. Is knowing religion at all like knowing how to ride a bicycle? Something you do?
I’d say knowing X is propositional and what we mean when we talk about knowledge
Knowing how to do something is a skill.
Knowing a person or place is really saying you’re familiar with that entity. (c.f. French connaitre, savoir )
Muscle memory has no propositional content so I’m not sure how that could be a way of knowing.
Yes? No? The one thing I hate about the internet is it’s spasmodicity.
One moment you make a comment and the world beats down your door to disabuse you of your ideas.
The next one, and nada!
Oh well. I guess this means I’ll have to do the hard work and read about epistemology.
Brian – snort – I know, that happens to me all the time. I do a post and then go off somewhere for awhile; I come back to a torrent of comments, I comment, and a dead silence falls. It’s rather like sitting down at the popular lunch table in high school when one is oneself a nerd who is not supposed to sit there. It’s quite funny!
But it’s just a matter of time zones. There aren’t enough people commenting from Australia/NZ to prevent that long silence when it’s bedtime in much of the Anglophone world.
Cath – literally speaking there isn’t muscle memory – that’s a misnomer. That knowing how is unconscious processing, not muscle memory (there is no such thing).
There are different ways of knowing in that sense, but religious apologists hijack the phrase to defend a different (and wrong) sense.
Just to shake things up, I think rationalism and empiricism are different ways of knowing. Reason proves and evidence demonstrates, though all knowledge has to be derived by one of these two methods. I eagerly await a demonstration otherwise :P
I think that turns on an ambiguity in the word “ways”…
I think we’ve got Templeton wrong in this case. I don’t think they know what they’re doing any more at all. When they were rewarding right wingers and conservative religionists we at least knew where they stood, but if the aim of funding science and scientists is to bring science and religion closer, it’s not working. What it’s doing is secularizing the Foundation itself to the point where they have just given a million pounds to someone who is actually completely at odds with them.
I’ve just revived my own blog to talk about this issue at huge length (http://blog.incredulity.org.uk/?p=58).
It’s a bit sarcastic, but the take home point might of interest.
To save you reading the whole thing, I point out that it is far from clear why Rees has won this particular jackpot. He can’t even explain it himself, and he doesn’t appear to have asked (he’s probably in shock, poor man, he didn’t even think he qualified!) Templeton. Templeton aren’t very clear about it either.
The award is supposed to be for “profound insights”, but while Rees is a perfectly good scientist “profound insights” are conspicuous by their absence.
I said he was at “complete odds” with Templeton. He is indeed, though he won’t say so. But it’s true nevertheless. In fact, he won’t even say what the value of Templeton’s role is.
If Templeton’s aim to to encourage people to say that religion and science are compatible, as Ophelia says, it’s not obvious that Rees is on message.
Although he thinks that religion and science can co-exist, which obviously they can (I take it “co-existence” and “compatibility” are different things), he thinks they are completely different subjects to the extent that he thinks science/religion dialogue is pointless and unproductive. He doesn’t think most scientists are interested in religion, he’s not religious or interested in religion himself, he’s got nothing to say about science/religion relationships, nothing to say about belief in God, and he doesn’t think that scientists should even talk about philosophy or theology – even if they’ve read up on it.
If Templeton are trying to bribe people, they must be thinking this was £1 million straight down the drain.
I’m thinking this was a criminal waste of £1 million either way.
Dan
Dan,
I think the Templeton people are smarter than you give credit for. This is the Templeton’s way of promoting the accommodationists (as represented by Mooney and co.). This prize is essentially a reward for Martin Rees’s controversial role in getting the National Academies of Sciences to host the 2010 Templeton Prize ceremony. That is, the prize isn’t about Rees’s contribution to spirituality (Rees himself in his acceptance speech says he doesn’t really know why he was given it — “I am diffident about my qualifications”).
The Templeton Foundation claims that it was Rees’s work on cosmology that won him the award, but Rees’s contribution is on a par with dozens of other cosmologists. Rees’s work should not be dismissed — he is an important astrophysicist, but he has had less impact on cosmology *or* spiritual matters than Hawking, Weinberg, Penzias and Wilson, Smoot, Giacconi, Davis, Koshiba, Perl and Reines, Hulse and Taylor, and many others. Again, this is not meant to diminish Rees’s work (in the sly way Mark Vernon tried to smear Hawking’s contribution to science). Rees is a major figure in the field. But there are many others with even greater claims, and yet the Templeton prize goes to the cosmologist who helped the Foundation get a PR boost from the National Academy of Sciences.
Hmm. That’s interesting though. I did wonder…He does seem a not very enthusiastic Templetonian, at least. If it is just a reward for letting them borrow some NAS prestige…well that was some expensive prestige. It’s not even the money so much, it’s the PR and ink that go with it. That seems really thrown away if he’s not a party line guy.
Ophelia,
I think he’s the perfect party line guy. He’s assisted the Templeton Foundation gain an inappropriate foothold into the NAS; he’s openly criticised Dawkins for being too mean about religion, and he’s said in his acceptance speech that he is proud to count himself among past Templeton winners — which include Mother Theresa and Billy Graham and Bill Bright.
So he’s perfect: nominally an agnostic, but in practical terms a pro-Templeton advocate. He toes all the party lines Templeton needs him to toe.
There are different ways of knowing in that sense, but religious apologists hijack the phrase to defend a different (and wrong) sense.
Bit late in commenting, but could you please tell me what that sense is? What do we mean by knowledge. Plato probably made Socrates say it was justified, true knowledge, and Getier pointed out that that wasn’t the whole story. But there must be some truth to it, and thus some propositional content. This isn’t a trick, it’s simply something I don’t know.
But it’s just a matter of time zones. There aren’t enough people commenting from Australia/NZ to prevent that long silence when it’s bedtime in much of the Anglophone world.
Do you mean to tell me that you don’t hover over your computer 24/7 in the hope that I might say something interesting? I’m disillusioned. :)